If it is said:

“The occurrence of the first temporal event prepared the essence for the occurrence of the second,”

they are told:

The essence itself is the cause of them all, and its relation to them all is one and the same. What, then, necessitates that it should make the former prepare it for the latter rather than the reverse, when nothing subsists in it that would single out one rather than the other?

Moreover, how can it become the agent (1) of this temporal event after not having been its agent (2), without anything coming to subsist in it?

Moreover, how can its effect make it an agent after it was not one, without any act coming to subsist in it?

If they say:

“Its acts differ and come into being because the recipients and conditions differ and because this preparedness comes into being; [and] the cause (3) of that occurrence is the motions of the celestial spheres and the conjunctions of the heavenly bodies,”

they are told:

Even if this were possible, it would be possible only where the agent that prepares is distinct from the agent that supplies—like the sun, whose light and heat stream over the world. Its action varies, and its full effect is delayed beyond its rising because the recipients differ and come into being; yet the recipients are not produced by the sun.

The same applies to what they claim concerning the active intellect, whose emanation in this world varies according to the differences among its recipients. The recipients differ because the motions of the celestial spheres differ, while the motions of all the spheres do not proceed from the emanating intellect.